The reflector oven is a well-known item of camping equipment. The principle of a reflector oven is simple: collect radiant heat from a source, like a campfire, and reflect it onto a baking surface or food item in the middle of the oven. The collected heat is usually enough, assuming sufficient size of the heat source, to bake food or any other item desired to be heated. Prior art reflector ovens typically have top and bottom panels which primarily collect and direct heat, and some form of rack structure to hold food, or some other item, in the center of the top and bottom panels, thus allowing most efficient cooking and heating. They may or may not have two side panels or a frame to help support the top and bottom panels.
While adequate for basic purposes, prior art reflector ovens tend to be flimsy, as a concession to the fact they are most used while a person is camping or backpacking and thus have a limited amount of material they can carry. They also feature few parts, for easy construction and to reduce the possibility of part loss. Reflector ovens tend to not be very deep, and thus can only hold small portions of food for cooking. They also tend to not cook evenly, requiring movement of the oven or the food for adequate cooking of the food. The present invention is a reflector oven which addresses these issues.
A reflector oven represents a departure from the prior art if it allows for a greater height and depth so as to allow greater volumes of food to be cooked and if it provides ventilation holes to foster more even cooking without manipulating the oven itself. Such an oven must still be reasonably easy to carry and feature few parts so that it may be ported, assembled, disassembled, and have disassembled parts easily collected to inhibit loss.